Various products such as over-the-counter pharmaceuticals have conventionally been offered in single-dose blister cards for providing a consumer individual doses of the product. The blister cards generally comprise a thin sheet of transparent material defining a plurality of blisters. A removable backing (e.g., foil, plastic, or film) is typically adhered to the transparent material for sealing each blister individually. Each blister contains a single dose such as one or two tablets of the subject medication, e.g., cold medicine. Some manufacturers of the blister cards include perforations between the individual blisters, thereby enabling a consumer to remove one or more blisters from the blister card for transporting or discarding, for example. Immediately prior to ingestion, the consumer needs only to apply a force to the blister and push the medicine through the foil backing or to peel off the backing to release the product.
Such conventional single-dose blister cards are also utilized by pharmacists for prescription medications. Additionally, in recent years, pharmacists have begun utilizing multi-dose blister cards. Multi-dose blister cards are constructed generally identical to single-dose blister cards, although slightly larger in some cases. For example, multi-dose blister cards include individual blisters sized and configured to accommodate multiple tablets, and more particularly, multiple doses of different medications. Such multi-dose blister cards can help reduce confusion among patients having to ingest multiple prescriptions, for example, on any given day. One typical multi-dose blister card may include, for example, an individual blister for each day of the week, where each blister contains the prescribed medication for that day. Accordingly, the blisters for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday may contain, for example, two drug tablets, while the blisters for Tuesday and Thursday may contain three drug tablets. Accordingly, the patient must only identify the day of the week (and time of day) to ensure that all prescribed medications are ingested for that day.
Generally, there are two methods available for preparing such multi-dose blister cards. A first method includes a trained technician manually placing the appropriate drug in each blister. Additionally, most states within the United States of America require that a licensed pharmacist personally review and confirm that the entire blister card contains the correct drug or drugs, as well as the doses for each, prior to delivering the prescription to the patient. Such manual preparation is time-consuming, prone to human error, and costly.
Another method for filling such multi-dose blister packs includes utilizing a complex machine that holds the empty blister pack and sorts drugs into the appropriate blisters in an automated or semi-automated fashion. Once the blister cards are filled, however, a licensed pharmacist must personally review and confirm the contents in accordance with local laws. Such machines involve complex hardware and software components, and thus are costly to implement.